Justine

More about the book

Justine is one of four interlocking novels which each tell various aspects of a complex story of passion and deception from various points of view. The quartet is set in the Egyptian city of Alexandria of the 1930s and 1940s, and the city itself becomes as much of a complex character as the human protagonists. Justine is narrated by an Englishman, who is not named in this novel, but is named as "Darley" in the later novels of the quartet. He is a struggling writer and schoolmaster. At the beginning of the book, living alone on a Greek island, he retells past events and love affairs, including his affair with Justine- a beautiful, rich, and mysterious Jewish woman who is married to a wealthy Egyptian Copt, Nessim. Almost all of the characters are erotically obsessed with Justine. Justine uses the others' obsessions to satiate her own demons, often emotionally destroying those involved. The narrator and Justine begin to be afraid that her husband Nessim, who is also the narrator's friend and is obsessed with his wife to such a degree that he has her followed about the city, knows about their affair.